Trey Pearson’s ‘Love Is Love’ Is A Powerful Tribute To Queer Sacred Spaces

In his new song video, “Love Is Love,” Trey Pearson reveals vigor and self-acceptance amid a bevy of homosexual and lesbian friends on a crowded dance ground.

To someone with a passing wisdom of queer nightlife, it’s a well-known scene. For Pearson, the clip represents the end result of a private, and from time to time painful, adventure. Launched Nov. 17, “Love Is Love” is the name monitor from the singer-songwriter’s debut solo EP of the similar identify. (The primary unmarried, “Silver Horizon,” dropped in April.) The seven new songs are the primary that Pearson — who spent 20 years because the lead singer of the Christian rock band Everyday Sunday — has written and recorded since publicly coming out as gay in 2016.

“I truly sought after to seize the variety of feelings I’ve felt up to now 12 months,” Pearson, 37, instructed HuffPost. “I felt like I didn’t have to carry again this time. I felt like I used to be in a position to be totally inclined. In an effort to do this as an artist is the most efficient feeling in all of the global.”

“Love Is Love” borrows its name from “Hamilton” composer Lin-Manuel Miranda’s 2016 Tony Awards speech honoring the 49 sufferers of Orlando’s Pulse nightclub massacre, a lot of whom recognized as queer. Calling his track “a tribute to all LGBTQ sacred areas,” Pearson opted to shoot the video in his place of birth of Columbus, Ohio, versus a metropolis with a globally recognized queer neighborhood like New York or San Francisco. Doing so, he stated, would spotlight the folks and puts “that truly gave me shelter after I got here out.”

“After I got here out, I misplaced numerous other people in my existence,” he defined. “I felt like I’d moved to an absolutely new metropolis, although I nonetheless lived [in Columbus]. I needed to simply totally get started over and rebuild relationships and work out my existence as an out homosexual guy.”

Pearson’s struggles after his popping out got here to a head in September 2016, when he and his band were cut from the lineup of California’s Joshua Fest, a “family-friendly” Christian song competition, after 11 contributors of the development’s manufacturing group threatened to stroll out if he carried out. (On the final minute, he used to be invited to sign up for the contributors of Five Iron Frenzy, a ska-punk band, for an encore.)

He tackles his religion without delay at the midtempo ballad, “Hi there Jesus,” on which he sings, “I do know that I may by no means trade, I attempted so exhausting, introduced such a lot ache, I simply wanna be liked for who I’m.”

“In 2017, in a Western evangelical tradition of Christianity, we will combine up what we predict [religion] approach, and what it approach to apply Jesus,” Pearson stated of the track. “I’ve discovered to not care as a lot about that. To like your neighbor as your self … to me, that used to be the actual message of Jesus.”

Sonically, “Love Is Love” marks a brand new bankruptcy for Pearson, who left at the back of On a regular basis Sunday’s rock vibe in prefer of a cultured pop sound impressed by way of Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff. He doesn’t see references to his religion on “Love Is Love” as any other from bands like Coldplay or U2, either one of whom have explored spirituality of their paintings. “A wide variety of artists love to discover existence’s mysteries,” he stated.

With the discharge of “Love Is Love” at the back of him, Pearson is within the early levels of making plans a 20-city live performance excursion. In the long run, he’d love to encourage listeners who could also be suffering with their sexuality or different spaces in their identification thru his song and performances.

“I’ve this hobby to be a voice to assist as many people as I will to search out their voice and their reality,” Pearson stated. “The entirety that I will do with my artwork to talk up and talk out, I need to do.”